Short story
The elderwomen sat on pontoons when they told the stories. I was a girl then, but I still remember a lot. They dressed in their shawls and waited until night to tell us. It said something about how serious it was, without them having to say it. They were very old. I remember their fingers – long boned and purple blood running through them in the moonlight. The elderwomen’s skinny legs dipped into the black water of night.
They spoke of their youth, of something we would have taken as myth had our parents not have emphasized how important it was to listen. Not to believe, not to take faith in, but to listen. Listen to the ways of the old world.
The elderwomen said the world was once land, almost half of it. They spoke of things we could only imagine. Earth for miles. Stones among the dirt in such frequency that you could pick one up whenever you wanted. The elderwomen said that dry plankton, which they called grass when they were girls, grew upon the land like rain falls. That there was enough of this dry plankton that you could walk forever and feel it prick up between your toes.
All of the elderwomen died before I was ten. We tied them down and sent them to the bottom, but their stories float back up more and more now. More and more now because I believe what they said.
